


Spoiled

by glim



Series: wawa au [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Multi, New Jersey, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:03:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11631861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: Steve’s not going to ask either of them to fuss over him, and they both know he really doesn’t like being alone when he doesn’t feel good, but they also know he likes to have the choice to be on his own. And, sure, Steve can take care of himself, but it’s better when Bucky and Peggy take care of him, just like they all take care of each other.Wherein Steve is rather spoiled by both his partners.





	Spoiled

Bucky finds Steve all the way at the back of the third floor library stacks, curled up in a study carrel. He has the hood from his sweatshirt pulled up over his head and between that and the pile of books on the desk, he looks like he’s hiding.

Well. He probably is. He’s got two mid-terms this week and he’s starting to get that run-down, tired sort of look he always does about half-way through the spring semester where he can’t tell if it’s his allergies, asthma, or a some kind of head-cold thing bothering him.

Bucky pats Steve on the shoulder, puts a Wawa travel mug in front of him, and pulls the chair from the desk behind Steve in closer so he can sit by Steve.

“What’s that for?” Steve eyes the cup warily.

“For you. It’s fucking freezing in here,” Bucky adds, leaning in so he can put an arm around Steve and peer over his shoulder. “French?”

Steve nods. He gives one of those little coughs that means he’s trying not to cough, and reaches for the mug Bucky brought. “Wait, is it–”

“It’s not tea, though that’s what you should be drinking. I’m a terrible boyfriend. An enabler.”

Steve reaches for the mug more eagerly this time, wrapping his hands around it and holding it close to his chest. After a sip he frowns a little, but then smiles and leans back in against Bucky. “It’s decaf.”

“You bet it is. I’m not going to be personally responsible for you not being able to sleep tonight.

"You study in bed. You like…” Steve holds out one hand and makes a sweeping gesture. “Books, everywhere. You know sleeping with them doesn’t count? You have to actually read them.”

Bucky nudges Steve in the side, but stops when he coughs and when somebody, invisible and a few bookshelves away, makes a pointed hushing sound. Steve coughs again, burying his face in the sleeve of his hoodie, and gives the quietest, most pathetic sounding sniffle.

Caught between wanting to laugh at and wanting to kiss Steve, Bucky leans in to rest his cheek against the back of Steve’s shoulder. After a minute, Steve shifts and moves and tugs Bucky in to nuzzle a kiss against his cheek.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. “Stay and work? I’ll quiz you when we’re done.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. I have my geology.” Even though he doesn’t have his geology lecture again until next week, and even though the last thing Bucky needs is Steve making up flash cards and quizzing him, Bucky settles in to spend the next hour or so in the library.

He’s pretty sure he’s going to have Steve sprawled over his bed tonight, sleepy and content to stroke Bucky’s hair while they watch tv, and that’s worth a trip to the Wawa for coffee.

* * *

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Bucky asks, a couple days later, when he wakes up to a chilly morning after spending the night with Steve. 

Steve sighs, coughs, and then sighs again. “Yeah.”

From Steve’s bed, Bucky gives a sigh of his own and turns to watch Steve get dressed for class. They’ve both been awake for about fifteen minutes, and Bucky’s pretty sure Steve’s spent at least ten of those minutes coughing and sniffling. By the time he’s pulled on jeans, a tee shirt, and the hoodie that Bucky had worn over to Steve’s last night, he has to sit back down on the bed and reach for his box of tissues.

“You feel like you’re getting sick?” Bucky kisses Steve on the shoulder after he’s done blowing his nose, and then wraps his arms around Steve to hug him warmly.

Steve shrugs. “I think I’m okay.” He tries to wriggle out of the hug, but ends up sinking down into it when Bucky kisses him on the shoulder again.

“That wasn’t even an answer.” Bucky tries pulling Steve back into bed, but relents when Steve pulls away to cough again.

“I really am okay,” he mutters, and he grabs a couple more tissues from the box before leaning in against Bucky. “I have French this morning, and then Peggy and I are going for brunch. You should come if you’re awake. You came in pretty late last night,” he adds.

“Yeah, I couldn’t get off duty until Nat called, and they had a problem at the other first-year dorm. I probably got here around two.”

Steve nestles in closer to Bucky, and, seriously, if Bucky didn’t know how committed Steve was to going to his Friday morning class, he would’ve pulled Steve right back into the rumpled mess of flannel sheets and fleece blankets on his bed. He’d curl up around Steve and rub his chest until they both fell asleep again, and then wake up again to go eat and get on with the day.

But yeah, Steve’s determined, and Bucky’s not stupid enough to try and stop him from going to class, especially if he’s already in one of his “I sound awful but I’m actually perfectly fine” moods. So, Bucky gives Steve another kiss, dozes off while Steve goes to brush his teeth and fix his hair, and then listens to Steve talk to him in French while he finishes getting ready.

“Avoid the smokers,” Bucky says before Steve leaves. “Can you say that in French?”

Steve frowns at Bucky. “Nobody needs a smoke break at eight a.m.”

Bucky shakes his head at Steve, sleepy, and smiles when Steve leans down to kiss him on the forehead. “Avoid the smokers,” he says again, softer, and touches Steve on the chest. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, okay.” A little smile lingers on Steve’s face, and he kisses Bucky once more before slipping out quietly.

* * *

See, Steve, who’s decidedly artsy without actually trying very hard to be artsy, decided he should try living in the special interest dorm this year. He has a single in the Visual Arts section, and gets to spend a lot of time with other students from the Fine Arts department. Demarest Hall has a bunch of cultural and queer themed events that Bucky knows Steve enjoys, and Bucky’s happy to go to most of them with him. He probably made the right choice living here.

But damn if half the dorm isn’t smoking something at some point, and Bucky’s not going to make an effort to find out who, but Steve’s lungs aren’t happy about the smoke on a good day. An early, chilly morning, when he’s definitely getting sick–yeah, that’s not a good asthma day.

Bucky sends Steve one text while he’s on his way to class and gets two in return telling him to get more rest. Which he probably needs, but that’s what the rest of the weekend is for.

Or, well, most of the weekend.He’s on duty again for part of this evening, but he should be able to catch up on sleep Saturday and Sunday. 

Whereas Steve decided he wanted to do one year in special interest housing, Bucky thought maybe he could take a position with Residence Life, get his housing paid for, and get some actual work experience. He didn’t actually expect he’d get a position as a resident assistant, and he certainly didn’t expect he’d up as an RA in one of the first-year dorms.

Somewhere, somebody in Residence Life thought Bucky would be the ideal person to make sure a bunch of eighteen year olds manage to survive their first year at Rutgers without failing all their classes, drinking themselves into oblivion, or falling prey to whatever other evils New Brunswick had to offer.

After an hour burrowed down in the warm blankets on Steve’s bed, Bucky resigns himself to getting up, going back to his room to shower and check on his floor, and then meet Steve and Peggy for food.

* * *

“How was class?”

“Good. We had a quiz. Did your floor survive the night without you?” Steve clears his throat after talking, and wraps his hands around the cup of tea on his tray.

“You sound…” Bucky frowns at Steve. “Not great.”

“I’m fine.”

“He’s getting sick,” Peggy says, and sits down next to Steve. She kisses the side of his head when he sighs. “It’s rather sweet, though, how he kept apologizing in French for coughing or sneezing during conversations.”

That makes Steve look down into his tea, embarrassed, and he leans away when Peggy tries to kiss him again. He eventually relents, resting his head against her shoulder and leaning into the arm she puts around his shoulders.

When Peggy smiles and kisses Steve’s hair, Bucky nudges one of her feet under the table with his. He gives her a look over his glass of juice, and she nods, then kisses Steve’s hair again when he holds back a cough.

“Eat your french toast,” Peggy says, “then you should come back to my room. Or, wait, you’re on duty, Bucky?”

Bucky nods. “Not yet, but, yeah. I have Friday Focus today.”

“Anything exciting this week?” Steve has to move away from Peggy when he coughs again, but at least it means he starts eating some of his brunch food, too.

“Not really. Pizza, _Finding Nemo_ , and I’m doing a thing about how they should actually study for their mid-terms between the pizza and movie.” Bucky glares when Steve nearly chokes on a laugh and points a fork at him. “Don’t start. I study.”

“Yeah, okay, now you do. I don’t think you even opened a book until finals your first semester in college.”

“And you just paint things for your finals,” Bucky says. “Peg, you can talk to the kids, you study heaps and don’t cram.”

“She’ll scare them into studying,” Steve replies, but fondly.

“No, thank you. I already did study group this week in my own hall. And I’ll let that go because you’re obviously feeling worse than you’re letting on,” she says to Steve, who’s already ducking away from the table to sneeze.

“You both can come back to my room, and then when movie’s done, we can spend the night at Peggy’s. Unless you don’t feel like it, Stevie?”

Steve shakes his head, and gives Bucky and Peggy a bleary sort of look. “No, that’s fine.”

Bucky gives a smile of approval. Steve’s not going to ask either of them to fuss over him, and they both know he really doesn’t like being alone when he doesn’t feel good, but they also know he likes to have the choice to be on his own. And, sure, Steve can take care of himself, but it’s better when Bucky and Peggy take care of him, just like they all take care of each other.

* * *

“Wait.” Steve sits up, bleary and confused, and looks around the dimly-lit bedroom. It takes him a few seconds of rubbing his face and forcing himself to wake up, but he finally realizes that he fell asleep on Peggy’s bed.

Actually, once he’s awake, it’s easy to figure out. His own bedroom is pretty tiny, and there’s usually noise or music from one of the lounges in the arts section. Bucky’s room is a little bigger, but most of the floor is covered in half-clean laundry and the bed usually smells vaguely like his body wash and deodorant, a warm, familiar sort of smell 

Peggy’s room is kind of like that, too, but with a light powder-y sort of vanilla scent, the one she usually uses when Steve’s around now that she knows the flowery ones bother him sometimes. There’s the Christmas lights she has strung up around the windows, too, and the pile of blankets and pillows on her bed.

Well, beds. Her roommate abandoned her for a boyfriend a few weeks into the semester, and all she had to do was push both beds together, but some king sized sheets and a couple egg-crate mattress pads, and build her nest of blankets and pillows.

“You fell asleep,” she says when Steve look over at her. She’s reading, but she puts the book aside to stroke Steve’s hair. “And you can go back to sleep…”

Steve shakes his head. He’s stuffed up and although his throat hurts less, it’s dry and scratchy enough that if he doesn’t have some water, he’s just going to cough at Peggy all afternoon.

Or evening. Maybe evening, it looks like it’s getting dark enough outside. The room is quiet, and Steve remembers again that Peggy’s smart enough to actually agree to live in the honors dorm.

He rubs his face again and gets himself off the bed long enough to find his water bottle in his bag, and then sits back down with a sigh.

“Ugh…” Peggy strokes his hair again and Steve gives her a tired, uncertain kind of look. “Pretty sure I have a cold… You might not want to get that close.”

“You just slept on me for about three hours. It’s fine,” she adds when he frowns and tries to swallow back a cough. “Drink you water.”

Steve does. He’ll have to refill the bottle at some point, so he doesn’t stop himself from drinking down as much as he can. Anything to top his throat from feeling like this.

When he’s finally settled back against the pillows, watching some aimless sitcom Peggy puts on her Netflix, he fishes his phone from the blankets.

“Where’s Bucky? I have about six texts from him telling me to take a nap and … some random affectionate emojis,” he says. “See?”

Peggy sighs, but looks over at Steve’s phone anyway. She’s pretty much left the ridiculous affectionate emoji exchange to the two of them, though Steve knows she texts Bucky the red heart emoji every night before bed if they’re not together.

That thought makes him smile and he nestles in closer to Peggy. She’s already changed out of her clothes for the evening and is wearing a pair of Steve’s plaid flannel boxers and grey tank top. It’s her fault, too, that Steve exchanged his jeans for sweats back at Bucky’s room, and he should probably thank her for that as the unplanned nap would’ve been a lot worse to wake up from otherwise.

“He went to get food for dinner. And to get you some tissues and NyQuil.”

“Oh.” Steve ponders for a moment, and then nods when trying to breathe through his nose makes him cough. “He’s a good boyfriend…”

“Well, you’re a bit spoiled, Steve.” Before Steve can retort, Peggy puts her head on Steve’s shoulder. “He’s a good boyfriend,” she agrees.

Steve spends the next half hour or so watching tv, dozing off, and coughing or sneezing into tissues. By the time Bucky gets back, he’s probably gone through about half the box in Peggy’s room and is pretty grateful both of them are better at guessing how sick he is than he is himself.

“Tissues,” Bucky says and puts a box in front of Steve. “Medicine, juice, and those completely unhelpful cough drops you like. 

"Not everyone can do the gross menthol thing,” Steve says. “Thanks, Buck.”

“Sure, babe. Just want you to feel better.” Bucky toes off his shoes and sits down on the edge of the bed. “And, dinner. Just sandwiches and stuff. You want coffee? I got you coffee.”

“You got me coffee?” Steve feels a surge of affection that he’s pretty sure is at least halfway due to how tired and cold-ridden he feels, but he leans in and hugs Bucky pretty tight anyway. “And Wawa food?”

Bucky goes kind of shy and quiet for a little bit, but he nods and hands Steve his hot drink. The shyness lingers as he hands out the food he bought them all, but once he’s stripped down to his boxers and lets Steve bury them all in the blankets after they’re done eating, the bashfulness is gone.


End file.
